


The Whole of Your Skin

by AHumanFemale



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 11:53:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHumanFemale/pseuds/AHumanFemale
Summary: Sonny was alone.The room was empty and his mind was full and he had never felt so alone in his entire life as he did just then, coat folded over his legs and eyes trained on the state seal at the front of the room.  Blue and gold, dulled in the low light and unflinching in the face of Sonny’s scrutiny.He’d been there half an hour now, just staring.It was all he could do, all he could process after weeks of sitting in a sanctuary and agonizing.  Punishing himself, punishing everyone else.  Asking for forgiveness only to later stubbornly deny that it was needed.  Whatever peace the walls of his church had once offered was gone now, deserted in the face of sins Sonny was unable to contemplate or comprehend or carry for himself.  It seemed fitting, then, that he’d left his own church and found himself here, in Barba’s.This is where they began.





	The Whole of Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt to fix it. Thank you to everyone who encouraged this and thank you to Robin Hood, who took time out of a busy day to beta. I appreciate you all and I hope you accept this meager offering.
> 
> xoxo, ahf.
> 
> p.s. - I strongly recommend listening to Mary Lambert's "This Heart" for this song. I listened to it the whole time I wrote this and it's the most Barisi song to ever exist.

**The Whole of Your Skin**

  
  


The massive room was empty, every bench bare.

The lights were down and the dying sunlight filtered through the drawn blinds.  What little there was of it - winter had come down hard in New York that year and the sun was fighting through a thick haze of heavy clouds that washed the city out.  It felt like it there.  There should be colors, he realized.  There should be the rich browns of the polished furniture, the rustic cream of the pillars.  The black leather upholstery.  He should have been able to see every shade and hue and yet… it all sat, muted.  As though whatever had given it life to begin with was nowhere to be found.

Sonny was alone.

The room was empty and his mind was full and he had never felt so alone in his entire life as he did just then, coat folded over his legs and eyes trained on the state seal at the front of the room.  Blue and gold, dulled in the low light and unflinching in the face of Sonny’s scrutiny.  

He’d been there half an hour now, just staring.  

It was all he could do, all he could process after weeks of sitting in a sanctuary and agonizing.  Punishing himself, punishing everyone else.  Asking for forgiveness only to later stubbornly deny that it was needed.  Whatever peace the walls of his church had once offered was gone now, deserted in the face of sins Sonny was unable to contemplate or comprehend or carry for himself.  It seemed fitting, then, that he’d left his own church and found himself here, in Barba’s.

This is where they began.

This is where Sonny sat behind him, eyes on broad shoulders and hanging on every syllable to fall from the man’s lips.

This was where Barba had spent long nights coaching him from the other side of the witness stand, green eyes direct and mouth turned up in a wry smirk because Sonny was trying to be slightly antagonistic and had long ago figured out that Barba reveled in it.

This was where Barba had accepted him, sitting side by side.

Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.

Close enough for Sonny to first feel the heat of the man’s body, to know for an absolute certainty that the cologne drifting into his nose had risen up from Barba’s skin.  Close enough to Sonny to learn how tension took hold of him, how it molded the shape of his body.  First at the shoulders and upper back, then into his neck.  Sonny knew what it felt like to be near him when the tension drained away, when Barba went soft and pliant in his chair because the win was his for the taking.  

This was where they ended.

First, because wanting Barba had undone years of him convincing himself that he could be straight if he tried hard enough.  Because wanting him had brought all that roaring to the forefront, all loathing and terror and an irrepressible desire that superseded the rest of it.  Barba had leaned in and Sonny had leaned in, awash in all that heat that went on forever, lips never quite meeting before Sonny realized what was happening.  Before he reared back and ran from the room.

Barba didn’t try again, no matter how much Sonny wanted him to.

Barba let him run and panic and yell at him when he didn’t deserve it.  

Barba kept giving him soft looks, even while giving him space, as though he’d been trying to tell Sonny that it was okay.  That he was there, that he was ready, if he ever happened to work it out.  Instead he’d tried to affirm his own heterosexuality with Rollins, came damn close to ruining a friendship because he was drunk and afraid of who he was, and now the open book of their unformed relationship was closed, because Barba was gone.  Because Barba had done something terrible.  Because in the heat of his own moment, Barba had no one to turn to other than a grieving mother who let herself be pushed from the room.

The prosecution bench sat, pristine, just ahead of him.

Polished and gleaming.

A reminder and an accusation.

Barba didn’t spend his last day there.

Eyes flickering to the other side of the room, Sonny forced himself to study the defendant’s chair.  It was the last role Barba would ever fill in this courtroom and it was… it was fucking  _ wrong _ .  It wasn’t who he was or what he’s accomplished and the thought of all Barba’s good being undone made him feel sick.  It forced him to his feet, sending his coat to the floor.  He moved to the aisle and ran his fingers through his hair, a hand over his face.  Paced up and down and felt the first cracks in his heart start to separate.

He hadn’t come to the trial.

Instead he’d sat in church, and then in a bar, because if one couldn’t offer comfort than surely the other one would.  He hadn’t come to the trial because he was afraid.  Afraid of the verdict, afraid of what it would mean.  Afraid of seeing Barba led away in handcuffs and afraid of seeing him walk free.  Afraid of walking in the room and standing in the aisle, just like he was then - unable to move to either one side or the other.  Sitting behind Stone like he always had for Barba felt like a betrayal of their years together and sitting behind Barba felt like a betrayal of everything he stood for.  Even now he found himself paralyzed, eyes forward even as his heart rested somewhere in his throat.

The state seal gleamed.

An accusation.  

Perhaps the failure wasn’t Barba’s.

Maybe he, all of them, had failed Barba.  

Sonny had seen, of course, how withdrawn Barba had become over the last year.  He’d seen the fight slowly bleed out of him, save for bright flashes of brilliance that never failed to take his breath away.  Sonny had watched as his wardrobe had gone muted, peacock feathers dulled, and his usually animated expressions fade to little more than vague shadows of annoyance or anger.  Rarely laughter, rarely amusement, rarely in the creased forehead and bared teeth that made Sonny’s lungs constrict because it meant Barba had fire in him and was willing to burn to get whatever justice he could.  

Why hadn’t anyone said anything?  

Why hadn’t anyone thought to check in on him?  

Why hadn’t  _ Sonny  _ checked on him?

Sonny, who knew Barba’s moods like he knew his own.  Knew every minute line on his face and what they meant, what they were for.  How long they would last.  Sonny, who knew that Barba’s caffeine and scotch habits were only ever growing while his eating habits were dwindling away.  It would have been so easy for him to show up late one night, with dinner because Rafael loosened up with food like some people do with booze, and let him talk.  He could have been an ear, could have been a shoulder the man clearly needed.

_ He has Liv _ , Sonny always told himself.   _ What would he need you for? _

He didn’t have an answer but knew even now he was wrong.

Barba needed him.

Barba needed him and Sonny stayed away, turned his back on him, because he was weak and afraid and couldn’t bear to admit to himself that falling for Barba was so far beyond his control that he might as well have been trying to hold off the tide.

For a man who loved so easily, it was telling that he couldn’t think of a word stronger than  _ love  _ to describe what Barba did to him.

Rapture, admiration, obsession.

Need.

Want that occasionally rendered him breathless and weak in the knees.  

_ Joy. _

The sight of the man’s face had lit something in him he would never be able to quell, had never found anywhere else, and now it was over.  Sonny had wasted their time together agonizing over wanting men in the first place rather than loving the man who made him so happy he didn’t know what to do with it all.  It would never stop plaguing him, the question of whether or not all this would have happened had Sonny hadn’t been afraid and kept himself away.  Had Sonny not been so full of fear, so full of doubt, would he have been able to comfort Barba?  Would they have been able to talk, to make love, to give Barba a sense of direction outside a job that seemed to be killing him?

A job that made him kill?

“I’m sorry,” Sonny murmured, voice breaking even in the silence of the deserted courtroom.  “God, I’m so sorry.”

He picked his coat up off the floor and stood in the aisle again, eyes unable to choose where they landed.

Prosecution.

Defense.

Barba was gone.

He turned and fled.

Dominick Carisi Jr. was a weak man, filled with fear, and now Barba was gone.  

The courtroom doors practically slammed behind him but he was moving too fast to care.  Out of the lobby, out the doors of the courthouse.  Down the steps they’d descended together so many times and across the street.  Getting to Barba’s office was easy.  He’d done it on no sleep, on no caffeine, starving and half asleep.  He’d done it happy and dejected and furious.  He’d come to Barba every way he could, save for the one way he’d needed to.

Barba’s floor loomed ahead of him before he realized what he was doing and the rest of the building was silent.  Not another soul to witness… whatever this ended up being.  He didn’t know but that didn’t slow him down, long legs carrying him faster than he’d ever gone down this hallway.  Carmen was already gone for the day but he could see the glass of Barba’s door and Sonny still didn’t know what he’d say but it didn’t matter because-

Because the office was black.

Dark, windows drawn.

He didn’t even have to check the door to know that it was locked.

He did, of course, just in case.  

It was locked and the doorknob was cold and the windows were all dark.  Sonny couldn’t stop the hammering in his chest as he looked up and saw that the letters on the glass had been scraped away already.  Where one there was a name as dear to him as his own, there was now… nothing.  Nothing but that same state seal that had accused him in the courtroom a few moments ago, seeing through Sonny in a way that left him shaken.

_ Rafael Barba, Assistant District Attorney. _

Barba was gone.

His windows were dark and his name was gone and Sonny could hardly trace where it had been before without his eyes burning.  

He turned away.

Fled again, this time from the District Attorney’s building.  

He caught a cab because he didn’t have the patience to wait for a car and gave an address he hadn’t used for years - the apartment building where he’d helped organize Barba’s security, all those years ago.  Where he’d paced hallways and checked elevators stared down neighbors, all to keep the man safe.  Where he’d never stepped foot again, not after the kiss that never happened, because Barba’s home was close to the heart of him and it was his heart that Sonny both wanted and feared when he was alone in the dark.

In less than a second Sonny was at his building, staring it down.  Admiring again the shades of gray that saturated his world.  Gray until he noticed the patrol cars, anyway, with their lights flashing red and blue in the dark as the sun set heavy behind steel blue clouds.  Sonny’s heart jolted in his chest.  Three cars, parked haphazardly in all angles up and down the sidewalk in front of Barba’s building.  There were no officers milling around, no noise of approaching sirens.  The patrol cars were empty, in fact, as he climbed out of the taxi and rushed up to them.  No one inside, not so much as a single uniform to man the radio and wait for instructions.  Sonny’s mouth went dry, thoughts headed for the worst, and waved the taxi on as he took off at a run toward the door.

The lobby was empty, which concerned him more than the cars outside had.  Had the building been evacuated?  Then where were the buses, the fire trucks?  He found not another officer, uniform or detective, between the lobby and the fifth floor, where Barba lived.  His heart was racing and his mouth was dry and he couldn’t shake this bone-deep fear that had invaded him.  Making him go cold, sending adrenaline racing through him as he rounded the corner to find Barba’s door.

Closed.

Closed off.

Crime scene tape covered the door from frame to frame, acres of it, all in a painfully bright yellow that made him wince even as his heart tried to claw out of his chest.  Sonny grabbed at it, shouted as he tried to peel it away, but there was always more and no one was listening.  No one came to the door, no one came into the hallway where he was trying to get in, and there was nothing he wanted to hear more in that moment than Barba but he wasn’t there.  Sonny couldn’t get through the crime scene tape, seemingly connected now to the wood and stone of the immovable building, and somehow he knew that Barba wasn’t there.

“Barba!” he cried, voice failing as he pulled at the ribbons that were now winding their way up his arm.  “Barba!”

There was no answer.

Only the sound of his anguished breathing as he stopped fighting with the tape and let his head fall against the door instead, the dull thud far less than what he deserved.

Barba was gone.

Barba was-

 

**…**

 

Sonny sat straight up in bed, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.

Sweat covered him, the cloying panic of the dream refusing to ease even as he came back to himself and recognized the shapes of his bedroom, the shadows here familiar even in the pitch black of night.  Thunder sounded and shook the glass of the window, the dark of the night flashing blue-white as another crack of lightning split the sky and the rolling groans of a summer storm poured out.  

His heart thudded heavily in his chest and his eyes fell closed.

A dream, he told himself.

Just a dream.

He fell back down to the bed - the weight of grief heavy on his chest - as he blinked against the tears in his eyes.  His first shuddering breath burned as though he’d been holding it for ages but he let it go and took in another, willing his heart to slow.  Willing it to slide back into his chest where he belonged so he wouldn’t have to swallow thickly around it while his mind still raced and the yawning pit in his chest seemed determined to swallow him whole.  

“You okay?”

Sonny turned, finding eyes lit green even in the low light of his bedroom.

_ Rafael _ .  

“You’ve been shaking for a little while.  Talking some,” the man told him quietly, as though still afraid of waking Sonny up.  “I wasn’t sure what I should do.”

Rafael was in his home.

In his bed, tangled in his sheets.

Rafael was here.

Yesterday they’d buried Mike Dodds, yesterday Rafael had leaned in, and yesterday Sonny had brought him home for the night.  

The breath that escaped him was so full of relief he wanted to cry.

“Say something,” Rafael murmured in the dark.  “Tell me what you need, what I can do.”

Sonny reached for him.

He turned on his side and reached a hand out to cradle the back of his neck, the angle of his jaw.  He used it to pull both of them forward and into a kiss that skipped over tentative or gentle and went straight for hungry, wanting.  Sonny knew the taste of him now, knew how Rafael’s muscles played under his skin, and knew how hard he’d grip Sonny’s sides when Sonny buried himself deep and Rafael had no choice but to arch up and spill over them both.

Rafael moved with him.

He sensed the mood and could undoubtedly taste the desperation on Sonny’s tongue because he opened his mouth and tugged Sonny closer.  Chest to chest, hip to hip.  His own hardened flesh to the dripping weight of Sonny’s prick, rigid and bare.  They fucked last night, had come with hoarse yells and groaned blasphemies and whispered endearments not meant for the light of day, and Rafael had slept naked in his bed with the expectation of breakfast the next morning.  Breakfast still hours away now, as Sonny settled him on his back again and Rafael’s legs fell open to welcome him.  

Barba wasn’t gone.

Barba was here.

Barba was  _ Rafael _ , arching his back off Sonny’s mattress and allowing himself to be kissed rough and needy while Sonny did his best to pin him in place.  Swollen flesh grazed and rubbed as Rafael canted his hips, spurring him on.  

Rafael always spurred him on, made him better.  

Always challenged, always prodded, always pushed.

Sonny loved it.

Sonny loved the way Rafael always sought to give as good as he got, the way he antagonized and soothed in the same breath.  The way he turned Sonny inside out with pleasure, with something dangerously close to love, because Sonny hadn’t known what it meant to want someone until he’d first laid eyes on the man beneath him.  Until the first time he’d tasted him, until the first time Rafael had dug crescent moons into Sonny’s back and whispered into his ear that he was  _ so close _ .  He hadn’t known what it meant to adore someone until Rafael confessed that he felt safe with Sonny, that he trusted him.  

Rafael was here.

Rafael was under him while the lightning struck and the thunder rolled and he felt the silicone slick still thick in the crease of Rafael’s ass from a few hours before.  Before the dream, before Sonny had tasted what loss felt like when it was Barba,  _ Rafael _ , he’d lost.  Somewhere in his head there was another world where he’d stood to the side and let Barba lose everything, where they’d never happened at all, and it destroyed him.  He loathed himself, he loved Barba even there, and still he’d let Barba greet his downfall alone.  Like a coward, like a man undeserving of who Barba was.

“I’m sorry,” Sonny told him, sounding punchdrunk and broken, and Rafael only planted his feet and thrusted up.  Hot skin sliding together, thighs tight against Sonny’s hips.  

“Don’t,”  Rafael said, voice rough and assuring even he reached between them to clasp his fingers around Sonny, “Don’t apologize.  I’m here.”

He probably thought he was talking about something else.

About waking up only to need him again, about taking comfort in him.

Sonny felt Rafael guide him lower, against the still softened ring of muscle at Rafael’s entrance.  No protection to separate them this time, nothing to keep Sonny from feeling the raw brush of skin like a thread of electrical current joining them.  He sucked in a breath through his teeth, huffed something that sounded like a tearful laugh, and ducked his head to watch Rafael take him in.  Rafael, whose body must have been raw and sensitive but he arched up into it anyway, letting out a plaintive moan with every inch that Sonny sank inside him.  The fit was tighter than it had been a little while ago, it was hotter, and Rafael squirmed and clenched like it was all so much better anyway and Sonny couldn’t help but agree.

Anything with Rafael was better.

Food, wine, work, conversation.

Fighting.

Sex.

Falling asleep.

It was always better with Rafael, who was levering his hips to meet Sonny with every rock and sway he was given.  Waiting for Sonny to come back to him, to return from the haze of a nightmare Rafael didn’t know about and never would.  Instead Sonny let himself hover in between their worlds.  Let himself feel the loss, the devastation, the worry.  The heartbreak at knowing how Rafael had chosen to let himself be beaten.  Let himself feel Rafael in the here and now, thrusting so slow and deep and drinking in the long sighs that escaped from Rafael’s lips.  For a long moment it felt as though he was born to straddle those worlds, to forever feel love and loss and fear and the unquenchable heat under his skin.

“Tell me I can have you, Rafael,” Sonny bit out as his hips moved faster and his mouth hung slack over Rafael’s own, “Tell me you’re mine.”

Rafael would think this was about something else.

He would think this was about Dodds, about Heredio.

It wasn’t.

It was about the way grief pressed heavy on his shoulders and wrapped around his heart and clogged his lungs because he’d just come back from a life in which Rafael was never his to begin with, never his to lose even if it felt so much like it when he realized that the man he loved was gone.  Even if the man he loved was below him now, thrusting up to meet him and closing his eyes against the pleasure.

“Yours,” Rafael agreed, groaned out low and wanton while thunder crashed and lightning struck, “God, Sonny, I’m yours.  Don’t stop.  Just don’t stop.”

“Can’t,” he answered briefly and it was the most honest he’d been all night.  “Can’t leave you.  Can’t lose you.”

“Lose me?” Rafael asked, confused, but then Sonny thrusted up harder and the question died on his lips.  

Sonny took him - hard and slow and deliberate - and Rafael tightened his legs around Sonny’s waist.

Rafael clung tighter as Sonny widened his stance and sat up a little straighter, one hand on the headboard and the other still cradling Rafael’s jaw as he pulled out and shoved back in.  He waited to hear that it was too much, for him to slow down, but Rafael seemed to revel in it.  Meeting him thrust for thrust, wrapping long fingers around the side of Sonny’s neck and turning his head to nip at the tender skin of Sonny’s wrist.  A kiss for softness, a glance of teeth for speed.  A bite for a rough buck that made Rafael clench around him and Sonny’s vision swim. 

They couldn’t last much longer.  Not with their pace, not with their intensity, and Sonny saw it the second Rafael started his climb.  Legs shaking, breathing shallow, grip heavier now on the back of Sonny’s neck and on his hair and he pushed himself up and pulled Sonny deeper and drank in air and spilled out moans and Sonny needed him to know.  Needed him to know what his love felt like, needed him to know that he possessed all of what Sonny had, all of what he was, and that even if Rafael lost everything else he would always have that.

“Come on,” Sonny grated out, “Come on, Raf.  Come on, let me see you.  Let me have it, let me have you.”

“Sonny,  _ Sonny _ -”

Rafael held him tighter, drew him in closer, and threw his head back as he took a deep breath and bellowed out his release to the deafening roar of thunder outside.  It rattled the windows, rattled his bones, and the lightning outside lit up Rafael’s face as he felt warm fluid arc and splatter between them.  He could feel Rafael’s pleasure humming below his skin, dripping from his sternum, and Sonny’s grip on that nightmare - his fear, his unassailable grief - faltered for the first time since waking with it curled around his heart.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Sonny groaned out and he fucked him through it, “Oh, fuck, Raf.   _ Fuck _ , you come so pretty.  You’re driving me  _ crazy _ .”

And just when he thought it was over another long rope graced him, clear to Rafael’s chest, and Sonny thought for sure he’d cease to exist.

Rafael was here, and they were together, and Rafael was coming.

Rafael wasn’t gone.

“You’re going to kill me,” Sonny confessed as Rafael started to come back to himself, words trembling on his lips as he thrusted into Rafael’s slackened body.  He wasn’t sure which world had drawn it out of him but the sentiment was there, waiting to be heard.  Heard above the rain and thunder and the roar of the rest of the world beyond his window.  “God, I need you.  I need you so much.”

He wasn’t going to last.

Rafael didn’t want him to.

Rafael only murmured in agreement, green eyes fluttering open even as his body clenched hard around Sonny’s throbbing cock.

_ I give up,  _ Sonny thought.   _ I give in. _

To the whole of Rafael’s skin, to the love beating rampantly in his chest, and to the sure and certain knowledge that this was where he was meant to be.

“I’m here,” Rafael told him breathlessly as Sonny’s thrusts grew rough, “I’m here, it’s alright.  Come for me.  Let me feel you.”

Sonny pulled Rafael’s hair, drew his corded neck back just forcefully enough that it drew a gasp from him, and touched a kiss to the drumming pulse in his neck.  His hand tightened on the headboard, his back went rigid, and his hips stalled just long enough for him to thrust home, hard, and spill himself into Rafael’s body.  He came so hard his vision whited, so hard he held his breath and greeted the ensuing fire in his chest.  Every part of him seized and convulsed and he had hear his own ragged noises even above the roll of thunder and the sound of blood roaring in his ears as he filled him.

Rafael was here.

Sonny was here too.

When he was done, when there wasn’t anything else for him to give, he loosened his grip on Rafael’s hair and met his eyes and wanted to tell him he loved him.  He wanted to say that he’d take care of him, that he’d be there if Rafael wanted him.  If Rafael was ever scared or alone or sad or angry.  He didn’t.  He looked in Rafael’s eyes in the barely-there light and realized that it didn’t need to be said.  Rafael knew, just like Sonny knew.  They knew that this was where they’d always been meant to end up, where they’d always been destined to be.

With each other.

In this bed on this rainy night after the funeral of a good man.

In love.  

It occurred to him that whatever world existed elsewhere, whatever world had slipped into Sonny’s subconscious that night, this was the only one that mattered.

“Hey,” Rafael murmured and craned his neck up for a shaky kiss, “Come back to me.”

Sonny breathed, melted.

He belonged in  _ this  _ world.

With Rafael.

“I’m here,” he sighed against Rafael’s lips and gave him a tremulous laugh.  “Never gonna be anywhere else.”

Rafael smiled.

“I’m going to hold you to that, detective,” he teased but it was too soft, too loving, to have ever grown its edge.

Sonny smiled back.

“Good.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is where I am now. A very wise writer by the name of greygerbil told me that you choose your own canon, and this is what I choose. I choose to ignore 18 and 19 - nothing happened for either of them anyway so it's easy enough to do - and I'm just going to write the rest of my Barisi from the end of 17. I'm going to keep them where they belong, where the current writers can't touch them. - xoxo, ahf.


End file.
